Talk:Barley sugar

THIS WHOLE ARTICLE IS LIKELY COMPLETELY WRONG.
See the kind of sugar, maltose, that is made by the megaton worldwide. It is malted barley extract sugar. See maltose, beer, barley.

Practically every sugar article in Wikipedia is full of what seems to be a very, forgive me, ignorant confusion about the definition of malt sugar and caramel. They are clearly not the same thing! Mydogtrouble (talk) 03:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I repaired the link to the FDA, who consider the term as used for caramel nearly meaningless and mistaken. I suggest that whatever historical reason exists for calling a caramel a "barley sugar" is as well attributed to the ignorance of the cooks who passed along misinformation anecdotally to proteges. Considering that actual sugar from actual barley exists and is most definitely NOT what is described in the article, that attempting to make a long held ignorance "standard terminology" is a mistake. Mydogtrouble (talk) 04:12, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Another possibility is of a multi-year (or multi-century) scam or historical fraud perpetuated by confectioners with more avarice than concern for honest representation of their wares. Which raises a philosophical question: how long does an error have to be perpetuated before a thing's false name becomes its actual name? If a class of vendors sells a mixture of garlic and salt and labels it "garlic powder" for instance, and gets away with fooling the ignorant, and passes down this unscrupulous practice to succeeding vendors, does eventually "garlic powder" really mean "garlic salt?" Mydogtrouble (talk) 21:32, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, this is mostly twaddle. I'm going to delete most of the uncertain bits. Glynhughes (talk) 18:20, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I think in Britain, the spiral shape is actually what makes it "barley sugar", and has been for a very long time, as the OED suggests. Johnbod (talk) 19:03, 17 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Define "ignorant". Are people "ignorant" if they know perfectly well that "garlic powder" is actually garlic salt, but just accept that that's what "garlic powder" means in their culture? Nobody in Britain expects barley sugar to be maltose because that's not what the phrase "barley sugar" means, and as far as I know never has been. You can harden fruit sugars into a kind of sweet; does that mean calling boiled sweets with fruit flavouring "fruit sweets" is wrong? 213.1.33.45 (talk) 15:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Nuclear reactors
Its also the name of the helicaly shaped item that sits inside reactor fuel plugs, its part of the neutron scatter plug assembly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.200.68 (talk) 20:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

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